Mechanical action paint remover

ABSTRACT

A hand tool for removing dried paint scales from a substantially flat surface includes a slingshot-like frame with an elongated handle. One of the legs of the frame is shorter than the other and a shaft is mounted between the ends of the legs to have a longitudinal axis in the plane of, but at an acute angle to, the longitudinal axis of the handle. A plurality of washers, each having a plurality of skewed feet extending radially outwardly therefrom, are mounted for rotatable movement about the axis of the shaft. With the tool held to bring all of the washers firmly in contact with a surface to be treated, forward or backward movement of the tool over the surface in alignment with the axis of the handle will tend to cause the washers to rotate and this imparts a scrubbing action and movement to the feet in contact with the surface simultaneously both in line with, and transversely of, the direction of such tool movement.

United States Patent 1191 Plauda 1 MECHANICAL ACTION PAINT REMOVER [75] lnventor:

[73] Assignee: Eugene R. Wood, Inver Grove Heights. Minn.

[22] Filed: June 23. 1972 [21] Appl. No.: 265,536

Lynn D. Plauda, Minneapolis. Minn.

[52] U.S. C1. 15/236 R, 15/93 R. 114/222, 145/1 R [51] Int. Cl 844d 3/16 [58] Field of Search 15/236 R. 236 NO, 93 R, 15/104131, 104.14; 145/1 R, 1 B; 114/222 [56] References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 1.026.436 5/1912 Gregg 15/236 R 3.678.532 7/1972 Boyd 1. 15/236 NO 3.1164193 11/1962 Berry .1 l 5/lO4.l4 R26.637 7/1969 Vaughn 15/236 NO FOREIGN PATENTS OR APPLICATIONS 8&7214 2/1957 Norway 15/236 R r 1 l 24 i 2a Mar. 26, 1974 Primary Examiner-Leon G. Machlin [5 7] ABSTRACT A hand tool for removing dried paint scales from a substantially flat surface includes a slingshot-like frame with an elongated handle. One of the legs of the frame is shorter than the other and a shaft is mounted between the ends of the legs to have a longitudinal axis in the plane of. but at an acute angle to, the longitudinal axis of the handle. A plurality of washers, each having a plurality of skewed feet extending radially outwardly therefrom, are mounted for rotatable movement about the axis of the shaft. With the tool held to bring all of the washers firmly in contact with a surface to be treated, forward or backward movement of the tool over the surface in alignment with the axis of the handle will tend to cause the washers to rotate and this imparts a scrubbing action and movement to the feet in contact with the surface simultaneously both in line with, and transversely of, the direction of such tool movement.

3 Claims, 4 Drawing Figures PATENTEU MR 2 6 I974 mu FIE 2 MECHANICAL ACTION PAINT REMOVER BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION This invention has relation to manual means designed to remove old, loose, cracked and/or scaling paint from a painted surface, usually for the purpose of preparing the surface to be repainted. Specifically, it is related to the use of a hand tool which has a plurality of paint removing feet designed to attack such a painted surface to remove any and all non-soundly adhered paint from that surface.

In America and throughout the world today, hundreds of thousands of buildings, painted many years ago, are covered with old and flaking paint, some of which is still firmly adhered to the painted surface and some of which immediately adjacent the firm paint has cracked away from that surface and must be completely removed before an effective job of repainting the surface can be done. A wide variety of hand operated and power driven tools have been utilized to attempt to effectively and efficiently remove all of the no longer adhered paint from such a surface and to remove protruding edges from remaining closely adhered paint. The object is to prepare the surface which can be covered with paint to produce a smooth paint layer.

Wire brushes, putty knives, fixed blade paint scrapers of J-shaped design, reciprocating sanders, rotating sanders and hand held wood block sanders, among other things, have been utilized in an attempt to accomplish this job.

While any of these methods are effective to remove the flecks or scales of paint which are no longer adhered in any manner to the painted surface, simply by breaking them off from the paint that is still adhered, none have been found particularly effective to scrub or work over or to test" each portion of apparently well adhered paint resting on the surface to discover and remove all portions which are not structurally soundly still bonded to the surface.

In the case of the wire brushes and the scrapers, once the paint which is so loose that it could be brushed off with a gloved hand has been removed, the tools tend to slide over the edges of the remaining paint, and not to be effective to dig into it to test whether it is already starting to separate from the surface underneath.

In the case of the various sanders, the paint so rapidly fills into the interstices of the abrasive material, that the sanding surface rapidly becomes ineffective and no longer abrasive. Use of these materials is very expensive and time consuming due to the necessity of somehow unloading the fragments of painted material from the abrasive surface and/or replacing the sandpaper frequently to continually present an abrasive unloaded" face to the painted work surface.

One way to determine whether paint is merely sound appearing but not adhered to the surface underneath is to run a pointed tool such as a screwdriver or an ice pick diagonally across the surface to be treated. In the case of unsound paint, this will cause the paint to crack away from the board and will indicate the presence of an areawhere extensive work must be done to identify and remove the seemingly sound, actually unsound, paint. This method, however, is not practical as it tends to leave a scratch which is difficult to cover" even in areas of sound paint due to the scratching action of the pointed tool.

The hand tools of the prior art are even less effective than the foregoing methods for accomplishing the purpose of the invention. For example, numerous hand tools utilize rotatable discs or washers or the like which are caused to rotate when rolled manually over a surface. However, these are all designed to move over the surface in direction at right angles to their axis of rotation. Such structures are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,354,828; 1,453,197; 1,528,615; 2,471,763 and 3,270,789. Obviously, none of these structures is capable of producing the transverse washer-foot scrubbing and scuffing action of the device as described and claimed below.

The patent to Merrick, U.S. Pat. No. 2,471,763 and the patent to .lanecek, U. S. Pat. No. 1,528,615 show something akin to washers with radially outwardly extending feet, but the first of these is designed to puncture holes through wallpaper, and the second is designed as a trimmer. Were either of these structures to be used so as to cause movement over the surface to be treated in a direction other than at right angles to the axis of rotation of the washers, to the extent that the scuffing action of the present invention was achieved, the tools would be inoperative or ineffective and destructive for the purposes for which they were designed.

In the face of these difficulties, the present invention was developed.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION A washer having a large number of radially extending feet which have been uniformly skewed out of the plane of the main body of the washer finds usage today as a lock washer when positioned between a nut on a bolt to prevent accidental rotation of the nut, thus locking the nut in place. In accordance with the present invention, it has been found that when a plurality of such washers are independently mounted for rotation on a common support shaft, movement of such a shaftwasher combination over a surface to be treated in a direction forming an acute angle with respect to the longitudinal axis of such shaft, will cause each of the washers to rotate because of the frictional contact of one or more of its feet with the surface being treated. This rotation will cause the particular foot or feet in contact with the ground at a particular moment to move transversely of the direction of movement of the shaft-washer assembly, thus causing each tiny foot to abrade, scrub and scrape the surface, not only in alignment with the direction of movement of the tool, but also simultaneously transversely of that direction. When a plurality of such washers are spaced closely with respect to each other, the effect is to contact each point on the surface to be treated with a plurality of the feet. Especially when the tool is moved back and forth a number of times over a particular area, this results in the loosening and removal of all paint which is not soundly bonded to the wood and results in the loose edges of all such well bonded paint being removed so that a substantially smooth surface consisting of a now unpainted surface from which paint has been removed and the smoothed painted surface are presented for repainting.

Although the frame on which the common shaft can be mounted can take numerous forms within the spirit or scope of this invention, a slingshot-like frame having one shorter and one longer leg has been found to be most satisfactory, with the forward and backward direction of movement of the frame being easily accomplished in alignment with the axis of an elongated handle.

To insure that all or virtually all of the surface being treated is contacted by one or more of the feet of every washer, the common support shaft is covered with a tubing of flexible material, each lock washer is mounted on a rubber washer or grommet, and these grommets are supported on this flexible tubing. Firm pressure of the resulting hand tool on the surface to be treated will cause those washers whose feet ride up on high points to be able to move against the resilience of the grommets and the tubing, slightly away from the surface, thus allowing adjacent washers not encountering such obstructions to remain firmly in contact with the surface which is being treated.

An important use of a hand tool made according to the present invention can be the cleaning of the older painted surfaces of clapboard houses. For this purpose, the shorter leg of the U-shaped supporting frame can be shaped to perform a scraping operation on the underside of the outer adjacent board as the washer feet are performing their scrubbing and cleaning action on the board below.

IN THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a plan view of a mechanical action paint remover made according to the present invention shown in the position to remove the paint from clapboard siding surfaces;

FIG. 2 is an enlarged sectional view taken on the line 2-2 in FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary end elevational view ofa portion of the hand tool of the invention as seen from above in FIG. 2; and

FIG. 4 is a fragmentary perspective view of the end support as seen from above in FIG. 2 and as seen in FIG. 3, showing its relationship to the washer and washer feet.

DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENT A mechanical action paint remover constituted as hand tool includes a slingshot-like frame 112 having a U-shaped member 14 lying in substantially the same plane as an elongated handle 16. A first leg 18 of the U-shaped member is shorter than a second leg 20 thereof.

As shown, a metallic cylindrical shaft 22 is fixedly mounted in the ends of each of the legs. A resilient plastic tubing 26 surrounds shaft 22. In order to insure a snug fit between the shaft and the tubing, it has been found helpful to use tubing which has a slightly lesser internal diameter than the external diameter of the shaft. While many different tubings would be suitable for the purpose, that which is used by the medical profession has been found to be excellent for the purpose.

Mounted on this resilient tubing and shaft, between the legs 18 and 20, are rubber grommets 24. Washers 28 are each mounted in one of the grommets. The washers each have a plurality of radially extending, uniformly skewed feet 30.

In operation, when the tool is moved to the right, as seen in FIG. 1, the feet 30 of the washers 28 which are in contact with a painted surface 32 will tend to remain in contact with that surface, thus causing rotation of the washers underneath feet 30 moving relatively to the left as seen in FIG. 1, thus causing the upper feet 30 to move to the right with respect to the shaft 22, as seen in FIG. 1. Because the shaft is not at right angles to the direction of movement of the hand in alignment with the axis of the handle 16, this relative rotation of the washers around the shaft 22 will cause the feet to move from position in contact with the painted surface 32 to position closer to the top of FIG. I, for example. This transverse action of the feet as the washers are forced to roll by the feet, dislodges the looser portions of paint flakes 34, causing them to fall from the painted surface.

At the end of the stroke to the right, as seen in FIG. I, there will be a stroke to the left, also while holding the feet 30 of the washers firmly against the painted surface. Now the washers will roll in such a fashion that the bottom feet, in contact with the surface 32, will move relatively to the right around the shaft 22, while the top of the washers will move relatively to the left around that shaft. This movement will cause the skewed feet which are in contact with the surface being treated to move transversely or downwardly while they are rotating, thus scrubbing at the painted surface to remove any further flakes of unsound paint.

Vigorous repetition of these strokes backward and forward will result in unsound paint being rapidly cleared from the surface being treated.

As seen in FIG. 1, a hook portion 36 of the shorter leg 18 is shaped to scrape the underside of the upstanding clapboard 38, thus causing any unsound paint in that area to be dislodged and to fall to the ground.

As the hand tool is firmly forced against the surface to be treated, when imperfections or protrusions in the painted surface arise in line with a particular foot or set of feet 30, the resilience of the tube 26 and of the rubber grommet 24 will wit that foot or those feet be pushed away by the imperfection, or raised, and the other feet will maintain their position firmly in contact with the area being treated.

I claim:

I. A hand tool for cleaning unsound paint and other deleterious material from a relatively flat surface. said tool including: a frame; a shaft supported on said frame; a plurality of washers rotatably mounted about the shaft, each of said washers having abrasive elements around the outer periphery thereof; handle means for moving the hand tool substantially in a straight line in a first direction with said abrasive elements in contact with said surface and with the axis of said shaft situated at an acute angle with respect to said first direction; said frame being of U-shaped configuration and having a first arm and a parallel longer second arm spaced apart from said first arm; said shaft being mounted between outer ends of said arms; and said shaft being covered with a resilient tubing.

2. The hand tool of claim I wherein said washers are mounted on circular grommets and said grommets are mounted on said tubing.

3. The hand tool of claim 2 wherein said abrasive elements of said washers are constituted as uniformly skewed feet extending radially outwardly from each such washer. 

1. A hand tool for cleaning unsound paint and other deleterious material from a relatively flat surface, said tool including: a frame; a shaft supported on said frame; a plurality of washers rotatably mounted about the shaft, each of said washers having abrasive elements around the outer periphery thereof; handle means for moving the hand tool substantially in a straight line in a first direction with said abrasive elements in contact with said surface and with the axis of said shaft situated at an acute angle with respect to said first direction; said frame being of U-shaped configuration and having a first arm and a parallel longer second arm spaced apart from said first arm; said shaft being mounted between outer ends of said arms; and said shaft being covered with a resilient tubing.
 2. The hand tool of claim 1 wherein said washers are mounted on circular grommets and said grommets are mounted on said tubing.
 3. The hand tool of claim 2 wherein said abrasive elements of said washers are constituted as uniformly skewed feet extending radially outwardly from each such washer. 